Everything That's Royal & Romantic French Garden Party with Chenin Blanc

Class transcript:

All right. We are recording, for your sake, Mary. And welcome, one and all. It is Sunday, which means Wine School. So we are thrilled to have everyone in our midst. Thank you guys so much for making this part of your regular weekend routine. You know, I continue to be humbled that many folks, you know, as are joining us on a regular basis, have made this a part of their regular Sunday rhythm. And we are thrilled to have you. We are thrilled to have a very special guest, one Mary Taylor, is in the mix here as well. Say hello, Mary. Hi. How's it going, guys? We are hoping, as always, to be joined by the illustrious and over-capable host of the show, Mary Taylor. Mary Taylor, thank you so much for joining us.

Sarah Thompson, for the sake of moderating this discussion. But she's experiencing some technical difficulties from home. So hopefully that will not continue to be the case. But, you know. Girl, I'm here. Oh, there we go. Victory! That is the rub with the virtual platform. You know, occasionally the virtual connectivity, you know, fails us. At any rate, for the sake of today's exercise, we are talking Shannon Blanc, which is one of the great underappreciated varietals in the wine pantheon. Certainly one of my favorites. It is a favorite of wine nerds everywhere because it is so versatile. It has this wonderful quality of terroir expressiveness, which is to say, you know, grown in different locations on different parcels, even with in a small sub-region like Anjou or an individual appellation like Sauvignon Blanc for the sake of this wine, you know, you get these really, you know, kind of wildly different expressions depending on the type of soil you're dealing with, depending on how they're vinified and depending on who is doing the production.

That is totally worth celebrating for the sake of this exercise. If you are at home and you're not muted already, please do so. Zoe, I'm looking in your direction. At any rate, thank you guys for the sake of provisioning. If you purchase through us, at our tail-up coat, fabulous tail-up coat online store, thank you. You will have a two-pack. You have Mary Taylor's very own Anjou Blanc, which you will learn more about forthwith, and you will have Chateau de Piret. Again, for those native French speakers in the mix, and Mary Taylor speaks beautiful French, I apologize. My accent is terrible. I will admit as much, but this is Chateau de Piret, and this is classic Sauvignac, stylistically very different. Then the Anjou Blanc, and it'll be fun to explore those stylistic differences and understand them better through the sake of this lesson.

If you're wondering, you know, what should I drink first, I would typically start with a lighter wine and then move on to the bigger, bolder one. These are pretty comparable, honestly, but I would start off with Mary Taylor's wine and then move on to Depi-Ré, if only because this does see some time in neutral chestnut vessels and gives it a slightly more oxidative streak. And the Chateau de Piret, I think, is the best wine for that. So, thank you. And we'll move on to the Anjou Blanc. It's a little pure, and we'll make a better kind of entrance into this exercise, and we'll talk; we'll be talking about it first at any rate. If you have any questions about where you should start, don't hesitate to hit up the chat box there.

Sarah and I will help you come to terms with that over the course of this lesson. I think we've given everyone ample opportunity to join the dialogue. I've lost Sarah Thompson again; I hope to find her and bring her back into the full circle. Very shortly, but I'm on the road, that's why there we go. Without further ado, it's been 10 weeks, 10 weeks, we are in double digits which is amazing, inspiring, humbling, and horrifying by the same stroke because many of us are still stuck on lockdown for the sake of the greater good. As always, have some shout outs to kick off the lesson. A shout out to Maggie Parker, I hope your parents mastered Zoom and are with us; greetings Maggie Parker's parents!

This is a wonderful and kind of different way to connect with one another, and I think you all, especially relatives who have been recommended to this virtual get-together, we are thrilled to have you all. Congratulations Hannah Lee, one of our former employees at Revelers, got a cushy job as a seller rat with none other than legendary California, one make your Gideon vine stock at close surroundings, we are so proud of you Hannah Lee, I personally am jealous, you rock girl! And a special welcome to two of my favorite sales people, two gems: William Holby of broadband selections and Patrick Green who works with Mary Taylor. Patrick, oh gee, goes back to the Paul Greco Hearth days. Patrick, you're amazing; we love you. Thank you for joining this exercise today.

You know, I think people don't realize that when you shut down restaurants, there are all sorts of triple trickle effects, for the sake of you know, the wineries, the farmers, and the line merchants, all these. People that we deal with whose businesses are suffering as well and you know I want to give them all the love we can in the midst of that. I'm in the midst of the current crisis, so this brings us to our weekly shameless self-promotion. We are open again, both at Revelers (our where I am broadcasting from) in a tail of goat. We are online. We are armed with a brand new content stream. We have a proper channel now, it's horrifying to me. Thank you all who joined the first iteration of Flying Blind, our weekly blind tasting series, this past Thursday.

If you wanna join this Thursday, you'll find the lines on sale through Reveller's Power. Special welcome to everyone joining us for the first time today. We're gonna put some of the older lessons online this Tuesday and have some bottles for sale as well. So if you wanna revisit our De Leon's with Pinot or Cabernet Sauvignon or Riesling or what have you, you can grab a bottle of wine and we'll send you a link to the class. And thanks to those of you who did that this week. For those of you who haven't already met Mary Taylor, Mary, say hi one more time. Hey guys. Hi everyone. How's it going? Having a sleepy Sunday here in Connecticut, but I'm all ready for you. Oh yeah. So we're thrilled to have Mary Taylor in the mix.

She is the negotiant, the woman who works with a local winemaker to bring this to our tables. And she's gonna talk all about Shannon and winemaking in the Loire. Sarah Thompson with us as always. We're gonna start off with a bit of verse. Today, it should be a bit of a French verse, but as such, I find myself, you know, feeling like, you know, we should address the current events a bit. So this is an old favorite from a Washington, DC native. So this is an excerpt from a Langston Hughes poem. Oh, let America be America again, the land that never has been yet, and yet must be the land where every man is free. That the land that's mine, the poor man's Indians, Negroes, me, who made America, whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, whose hand at the boundary, whose plow in the rain must bring back our mighty land.

And the mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose. The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, we must take back our land again. America. Oh yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me. And yet I swear this old America will be out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, the rape and rot, the graft and stealth and lies. We, the people, must redeem the land, the mines, the plants, the rivers, the mountains, the rivers, the rivers, the rivers, the mountains, and the endless plain. All, all, stretch of these great green states and make America again. Langston was first discovered as a busboy and poet in Washington, DC. He is a sage of the Harlem Renaissance.

And this is a poem that we had initially published for the sake of our list, right after the current president got elected. And, you know, I find myself, you know, feeling a bit silly at times like this while, you know, a mile plus away, people protest in front of the White House and people are feeling the dislocation and a sense of pain that they are for a variety of reasons across this country and across the world, you know, tasting wine can seem, you know, trivial, but by the same token, I think, you know, it helps us explore and make plain our shared humanity. In the midst of that uncertainty. And hopefully it can be ennobling in a way that inspires us to make a better world. And I think that is certainly worth celebrating.

I promise we'll get to wine shortly, but it does bring to mind the restaurant Tail Up Goat that I still own that formerly served guests, but now just takes out in delivery. I was featured in a New York Times piece shortly after the 2016 election by a local correspondent, and he wrote that he was talking, reflecting on an earlier kind of event in the life of the city. It was in a private room of a well-known Washington steakhouse, the caucus room, that about 15 leading Republicans met on Obama's inauguration night and laid out a plan to obstruct the new president's entire agenda. Perhaps democratic dissidents will start their own counter-revolution over orange wine and sardine sourdough bread at Tail Up Goat. And I hope we are. Thank you.

All so lucky, at any rate. But without further ado, on to the subject at hand, which is Chenin Blanc. I promise, Mary, I will kick it back to you very shortly. I'm going to give you all a brief history of the Loire and its most essential grape. The Loire, the longest river in France. And it snakes its way from the Massif Central all the way to the Atlantic. It is both the cradle of modern France and its garden. And one of my favorite quotes comes from Jancis Robinson, who, writing about Beauvray, but she could be writing about the entirety of the stretch that encompasses Anjou and Samara, said, 'Everything royal and romantic about France is summed up in this land of Renaissance chateau, ancient towns, and beguiling white wines that lies along the short stretch of the immense but gentle Loire.' So the Loire has always been an essential trade corridor for France.

Historically, it divided kind of southern France from northern France. And in terms of its wines, it has these dual identities, depending on where you are. So you have the mouth of the Loire. That encompasses Muscadet country. You have Anjou and Samara that have their own identity that centers around Chenin Blanc in Capri. And then you have Ravigny-Franc, largely. And then you have the Paissante, or the upper Loire, that is really Sauvignon Blanc and, to some extent, Pinot Noir country. So it is varied. Largely speaking, though, you are at the northern end of the kind of comfortable growing region historically for the sake of grape and the grape vine. So these are wines that are bright. They are fresh. Largely white.

Which is why they have struggled, I think, in parts, to gain the foothold that they deserve on the international marketplace and at least stateside. But historically, the Loire Valley has always been an important part of French culture. It emerged as the birthplace of the modern nation at the end of the Hundred Years War, so that would be the tail end of the 14th century, when the Joan of Arc summoned the armies of Charles VII, and the French colonizer, Charles V, to the siege at Orleans, which you can see kind of further upstream here along the Loire. For the better part of the century thereafter, Tours, which is right here, was essentially the de facto political capital of France. And the French aristocracy encamped there.

And if you wanted to get close to the king, you built an amazing kind of high Renaissance-era chateau. So that's why. You're dealing with château country here for the sake of the Loire. It has always been a wine region. Part of the reason that French aristocrats wanted to hold it down there is that for 10 months of the year, they could reliably get fresh produce. For the sake of the wines, Chenin Blanc was first documented in the 16th century. It's speculated that it could have been there 1,000 years earlier, some of the first mentions of a strong winemaking industry in the Loire date to the 5th century, toward the tail end of the Roman Empire. But Rabelais, that great Renaissance-era documenter of excess, refers to fat Chenin grapes in Gargantua in the middle 16th century.

And Chenin has been with us ever since. It has spread from there globally. South Africa actually grows quite a bit more. It's more Chénin Blanc than does France proper. But France, the Loire Valley, is still very much the spiritual home of the grape. And as such, it will be the center of our discourse today. Which brings us to our guest, Mary Taylor and her Anjou Blanc. So Mary, they saw a map of the Loire there. I'm going to pull that up again. So that you can give everyone a better sense of where your wine, in particular, hails from. But before we do that, how did you come as a woman in Connecticut at the moment to be working with Chénin Blanc in Anjou at all? Well, thanks for having me.

This is very exciting. I just want to point out this book that I pulled out by Jim. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Jackie Friedrichs, who most people haven't heard of. I think this is one of the best Loire Valley wine books ever. I had lunch with her once in Chinon. It was an amazing experience. But so yeah, you asked me how I came to work with Chenin Blanc. I can start from birth. But I think the most important time in my life was I lived in Mont-Louis for a summer. I was a student at the Institut de Touraine, so I had a lot of friends who were French speakers. I was a French-speaking friend, really. And I would commute from Mont-Louis.

So if you look at under Vouvray, Mont-Louis is only like a 25-minute drive to Tour, which is a big city and a lot of schools and universities. The Loire Valley by the way, or the Loire River, by the way, is one of the last wild rivers in France. It's never been cultivated. And it's 600 miles long. And one region that's not on this map that I also work in is Auvergne, the uh, you know the Côte Rôannaise, and all that so that's a pretty cool place too, um, and that is yeah, that would be sorry, that would be kind of off the map, um, to, uh, now under under Paysante there and that's something

we didn't touch on, that I think we will for the sake of our second wine is you know the very geology of this region so you go from the Paysante which is um, you know more ancient granite rock um, and the Massif Central into the Paris Basin which is younger limestone um, and he traipsed through some you know volcanic outcroppings and then back into um, more ancient rock uh for the sake of kind of north eastern or northwestern France and um so it's really varied um that way which is super fascinating for the sake of um Anjou-Samer and a grape like Chenin that showcases terroir really beautifully absolutely um, and the amount of growers so way back when I was a wine buyer in New York City and I I live in a shack in Connecticut on the lake but I'm really a Brooklyn girl, I am I really should be there protesting right now, but I'm here.

Um, but anyway, so uh, yeah. I lived. I lived in this household my boyfriend at the time, who was a winemaker, super passionate. All of his friends were winemakers, so we went all over and I, at that point, I was writing a newsletter about wine. Um, and I just remember like you'd go to somebody's house for lunch on Sunday and the first thing they'd serve you would be a Bonnezeau or a Corde de Chaume, perfectly chilled as an aperitif. And those wines are, I mean, they're pretty sweet. And you have to serve them exactly at the right time. But I was just taken, also Taken by the the troglodyte caves, um, and I was just taken by the the troglodyte caves,

um, the Paris basin is also is that, um, is that lime that white limestone but it's also I wrote this down, it's called Turonian chalk and they call it 'two foe' there, um, and the two foe is a one is calcareous so it is a limestone, um, so you got uh some different uh kind of classic rock formations here on the screen and uh this would be a kind of a fun segue for the sake of um albeit skipping you know huge segments of Mary's personal story because she's quite the renaissance woman and has led a million lives but um uh the chalk she's speaking to, uh, which is Really, predominant in uh parts of summer and in terrain um, is this two foe and uh when you're talking about any of these geological um, you know kind of uh component parts of a vineyard, it's important to note that there are a lot of different you know types of even two foes, so people will talk about two boblonk two, so you know it's always more complicated uh than you know a chart like this, you know, will you know easily illustrate but um, you know, this is a very chalky terrain that she's talking about and um, you know, typically historically, it made for great construction material for those beautiful Renaissance-era Châteaus which we'll see um in the case of the souvenir that you all are drinking but um there are all these quarries throughout um the region and there's something very poetic about the fact that uh with a lot of these you know really classic producers they will grow grapes above the very caves uh you know in which their wines are aged um and you know there's something hugely poetic about that oh absolutely and you know the whole like Louvre the tasting note for bouvray for shannon has always been wet wool I love that description and when you go down into these caves it'll be like 90 degrees in the middle of July and this you step 10 feet Into this cave, and it's cold dripping water from the the rock and just, it's just so romantic there. Um, and I'm so glad you're serving a Sauvignon because Jackie Friedrich said that Sauvignon, she thinks is the most cerebral wine in the world, it's so mineral, I mean it's so intense. Um, so it's fun to i think it's really fun to compare these two appellations now, so uh we're gonna we're gonna skip forward to your life as a uh a negotiator so um we're gonna skip past you know your career as a cheese merchant and as led sales personal assistant and uh you know you're making wine um in the Loire.

How were you received uh when you kind Of you know, first tried to make inroads there and you know where you know an American woman uh wanting to make chen and blanc in this you know decidedly kind of parochial um agricultural zone. Yeah well I have to say like I'm kind of mad at Burgundy and some parts of Bordeaux when I visit because there's a lot of snobbery um a lot of Americans show up there that don't really know, but in the places like Loire or in the southwest in France people are so kind and they're so delighted that you're interested in what they're doing. There's so much humility there. When I was just really really getting my both feet into the Loire Valley.

I used to shop at François Chidin's store, and I would look at all of the wines he'd carry, and he was really supportive of all these little tiny growers. And then I would call up the grower, and I would go taste with them. So, but how am I received? It's you know it's when I started this business, I've been in the wine business so long, so people knew. We started little by little, I had to upfront pay for my goods and all that, and now you know you just build that reputation, and if you pay your bills, everyone knows if you are a good payer or not. So, I pay my bills, so to some extent, you know, money talks, and you know, there's a universality to that.

That overcomes any reticence someone would have about dealing with, you know, an outsider exactly. And I speak French and I know how to make them laugh. Um, I picked up some of the uh colloquialisms um and yeah, we have a I always have a good banter with my grower was there a patriarchy that you had to work against? I think the the boire is is is or especially you know sauvignere you have some amazing women you know for the sake of uh Evelyn de Pompreon, you have Virginia Jolie, you have Tessa la Roche, you have some like real you know rock star female French french winemakers but that's relatively recent you know historically it was Very much a man's kind of uh work, and you know, like the America seminal American importer Becky Washerman talks about, you know, in the 70s, not even being allowed into, you know, the cob uh.

Did you encounter any reticence there or, you know, were you well now? No, I mean, if I work with a grower, I make them uh promise me that they are a feminist just be feminist. I'm like, 'Repeat after me.' Um, and in a lot of instances, I'm one of the biggest buyers of their production um, because I make 15 different wines, and in many of the wineries, I'm their most important client, so like if they have uh hoedunk backward patriarchal views and I'm sure They do, I mean France is notorious for patriarchy but it's also famous for feminism um and so if they do, they know not to show me and if I hear it, I'll correct it and be um so yeah I don't know why they trust me and work with me and let me into their lives but they do and we've all become sort of family so that's nice um can you kind of speak to how you work so you know people um you know looking at this bottle they see you know your very well-designed label and your name on it but they also see Pascal Boiteau's name on it, you know um how does that kind of business relationship operate across your brand yeah so all of my wines look exactly The same, but they have different words on them. Um, and I use the word 'negotiate' but it's not actually accurate. What does that mean traditionally?

Mary, that's somebody who's a merchant in the trade of you know buying and selling. So, it could be that you buy grapes for your winery that's like in Champagne, you'd be récoltant négociants. Um or you sell your grapes, that's négociants. Or you're like Louis Jadot and you uh contract with farms but you put your own label on it, that's really what like Girardin or Jadot, those types of big Latour. Um, remember Georges Dubuffet, rest in peace. Um, they were all like traditional patriarchal. I might say négociants, but I don’t do that because I put the grower name on the front and that’s a really important distinction. I don’t hide where it comes from; I don’t take any credit for the winemaking. Um, I’m a taster.

I’ve always been a really serious like blind taster and really interested in you know finding terroir, and I’m a terroir Hunter. Um, so I’m, I wouldn’t really necessarily say I’m a négociant; I’m just a label redesigner. Kind of one of the complaints I had with like fine wine world and I apologize since we’re all in it. Um was it? I, I didn’t think that your average person knew what a varietal was versus a uh Appalachian People don't they, they asked me if I'm talking about the Appalachian Mountains uh when I say that word. I think that system where they codified you know the place names is so interesting and I can talk about it forever; it goes back to the like Old Testament, they talk about wine according to geography.

I love the geographical history and I love that they got legalized and codified in the 20th century. Actually one of the earliest was Jeannier in the Loire Valley. I was shocked to read that today I wanted to bottle Europe; I actually wanted to make Europe a contender in the like mass market space, but also without sacrificing any. Quality to the wine, and I thought the only way to do that was to create like a label or brand that people could recognize, but then only work with honest, humble good growers. So that was just sort of my Eureka! You know, you know, I wouldn't have to make like a giant winery, you know, it's just like these huge productions and their bottling lines and I didn't want to do any of that.

I just wanted to use the skills I'd honed as an importer and a distributor and a buyer and a writer and all that stuff that I'd done to make this so. That's how I work. So Pascal Biotto is the father, and he and his son Charles, Seb, they make the wine. I taste every Vintage, I help with blending. We talk a lot about stylistic things. I check out the farming, I you know, and then I just do all the business of wine, and I let them do what they're good at, and I do what I'm good at. You know? Their job is to look down at their feet at the vines and really occupy themselves with winemaking and viticulture. And too often, I think people struggle.

They try to have a brand and try to do marketing, and I just I feel like it's it's all over the place. And I just wanted to kind of streamline it in a way. My label, by the way, is designed by my best friend Emily, who's the art director at the Eureka! and she's very talented yeah and you know I get the sense that you want to kind of start with individual wines as discrete data points and worry less about you know codifying a brand and just you know make kick-ass wine and you know those will be you know over time people will get a sense for your house style but you know though the wines will be the driver of you know your your business yeah absolutely and just I mean I can you just shut me up when you need to but um the house style of my project is you don't really get the hand of the winemaker as much as you get the image of the terroir so I don't do like long maceration I don't do orange wine I don't diss it I just don't do it I do wines that are affordable and they're also made so that you can really taste what's going on with them with the soil and the minerals and and the grape varietal and the micro climate just really capture terroir and not like a particular handling of things it's just that it's something that I do in my career that I really love. Of the winemaker, like you know, so that's how I work, so uh, vis-a-vis this particular Anjou Blanc, so it should be said, you know, when um, you know, we're talking uh, the Appalachian Mountains or Appalachian, vis-a-vis this wine, Anjou Blanc is the designation of origin, but in the French conception, in that old world um, old testament era conception of you know wine as place, Anjou Blanc is paramount, so you know, uh, you know, a plateau, I imagine you know, he would say yes, he makes wine from the Chenon Blanc grape, but he makes Anjou Blanc, you know, he doesn't mention the Blanc, he makes he makes Anjou Blanc first and foremost, and and those are those are different things, but um, you know, uh, we, you know, being on this side of the pond, you know, are thinking in terms of varietals, um, what do you like about working with Chenon, and this Chenon in particular?

Well, I just love that Chenon is so, it's so, it shows its Geography, so much more than a lot of other varieties, um, like the Chenin Blanc of Sauvignon is so mineral and the Chenin Blanc of Saumur is so rich, and in Anjou you have the it's called the Massif Armorican, it's the black slate, and then you have the two Faux so it meets there in Anjou and I feel like Anjou can be so many things and it for me I'm trying to show what I think is a balanced picture of Anjou so we take vineyards on both sides, we have the black slate and then we have a white slate and then we have the black slate and then we have the black slate, so this is a blend um this wine is a blend but it's all Chenin so like wrap your head around that.

Because it's um, it's vinified separately, the vineyards that are grown on the black uh schist are vinified separately from the two faux vineyards and we if they give such different um elements to the wine, the schist is like a really poignant, really minerally style and the two faux gives it like richness and so we just wanted to show like Like what would a very, very typical textbook, elegant and also sustainable, organically farmed wine really taste like and look like for your, you know, just at the price point. You know, I don't know what you're what you charge for that, but we're trying to be like really fair. So, but anyway, what do I love about Chenin? Just it's like Riesling. You can vinify it all the way sweet.

You can't do that with Chardonnay, for example. And you can make so many interesting styles. If you ever can try like a Coteau de Leon, that terroir is so interesting and like it tastes so different and it's spicy and it's rich and it has... And yeah, Angers Blanc is nothing like Cheverny, for example, which also where they grow Chenin. Yeah, so that's awesome. There's a lot to unpack there. I'm going to start with. It's a really awesome geological map of France, so it should be said, you know, there are one of the amazing things about wine is you can be interested in a lot of different disciplines. You can be, you know, kind of somebody who's a bit of a polymath. You know, you love art and literature, but you love, you know, science and nature.

And it's this amazing cipher that allows you to explore a lot of things at once. If you dive deeply enough down the wine rabbit hole, you become a bit of a geologist. And especially in the Loire, especially for the sake of a grapevine. Like Chenin, because, you know, I like; this is from the Chambers Street website, but this is a quote, you know, vis-a-vis Chenin in the Loire. Within the lower Loire where Chenin is hidden, geology varies more than climate. So you have essentially the same climactic zone. And, you know, the differences are down to the very kind of component parts of the vineyards themselves. Granite, schists, quartzite, sandstones and ancient weathered limestones alternate along the valleys and divides of its 11 principal appellations.

And, you know, each of those appellations has its own footprint, so that, you know, saying Anjou Blanc is more significant than saying Chenin Blanc, because they're all Chenin Blanc. But, you know, the particular, you know, shape or size of Chenin is more significant than Chenin itself. And just to kind of give you a sense of what Mary was speaking to for the sake of, you know, French geology. You can see the Loire here traipsing its way from the Mossy Centrale, and this is Auvergne, which essentially is running, you know, just west of the Rhône River Valley. And then the Loire snakes its way north and then turns quickly to the west. And the Paris Basin is this giant ancient seafloor.

And it is, you know, various ages of what is called calcareous or kind of limestone heavy, you know, chalky kinds of rocks that give typical, typically, you know, kind of limestone soils gives wines that are filigreed and acid driven and, you know, lightly floral and aromatic. And then around Samur, and certainly, you know, at this point, which is a bit of a dividing line in the central Loire region, you hit the Massif Amorcan, which is this much more ancient weathered rock, kind of like the Appalachian Mountains. It's been eroded over time. And that's the Schist that Mary was talking about. Schist is just metamorphosed. Slate and Schist tends to be a rock that gives wines that are a little, a little broader. It is not actually, fascinatingly enough, it is not, it doesn't produce higher yields.

The grapes get thicker skins. The wines themselves get a little more breadth. They're a little lower in acid. They're a little bit thicker. They're a little fuller and broader. Sometimes they take a little longer to come into their own. And there are a lot of different variables, vineyard to vineyard, that kind of dictate how Schist ultimately expresses itself. But I think for the sake of a wine like this, what I like is that you have that, you know, filigreed, you know, kind of delicate, you know, limestone presence and something more broad shouldered and fuller fruited for the sake of what you get from the Anjou Noir. And those two in combination give you a wine that's a bit of a choral symphony.

You know, you have, you know, different voices, you know, at, you know, different, you know, timbers and they're all, you know, complementing one another really, really beautifully. And it's, you know, encapsulates a lot of what I love about Schist in one, you know, glass, which is really remarkable. I just want to say one thing about Schist. New York City is an island of Schist. And they say that Schist has a really energetic, a lot of energy in the rock. And I think there's something to be said for that. So that's all. Sarah Thompson, we've been neglecting you for the full duration of class. What do you have for us from the commentariat? Yeah, well, I guess I'll start first with a couple of questions directly for you, Mary.

People want to know kind of what the size is of the house is that you're working with are and the growers. Do you focus on a particular size or is there a wide range of those? Yeah, it's it all varies. I don't really have a curative process. It's always if something comes into my life in a way, it's sort of I run smack into something and I just can't say no. I'm actually trying to curate a little less because I'm so excited about everything. If I could, I'd have a wine. And each of the Appalachians of Europe. But that's a that's a big ask. This this project here, this there on 200 hectares, which is pretty big. I think your average like small winery is like 30 hectares around there.

Your average big industrial is like a million and 200. I mean, sorry, I'm not a million. It's a thousand and 200 is relatively large. I mean, they're and this is actually Anjou Village. This is the rolling hills of the Chateau Brissac. And yeah, I mean, it's all family owned and it's all HVE certified, which is a high the highest level of sustainability certification. And they're in organic conversion now because the son is very inspired about organic farming and he's really influenced his father, Pascal. So there's a really nice story of evolution here and making better wine. I don't think their wines were very good. In the 90s, for example. But I chose them because honestly, I liked their wine so much. I loved their mentality. I love the humility of some of the farmers.

When I go to these fairs, all the American importers are in the like hipster Demeter natural wine side of the fair. And I'm in the like conventional but like humble people wearing like their caps. And and honestly, like like one of the. One of the wines that Chamber Street loves is Baudry and you would find Baudry in the more conventional side. You know, it's and you know, I want to make sure they're not using chemicals and they're not being industrial and awful. But I also want to make sure that that the price is fair, that I can supply people with wine for a decent, you know, just a fair and not expensive price. That's I always say that's part of sustainability. Since I have to make seventy-nine cents on the dollar.

I did when I worked for somebody, you know, I can't afford like thirty-five bucks for a bottle of wine. So I'm really sensitive about price, but I'm not trying to, I could just go on and on and on. But like my valence, I think you guys work with my valence. That's a really small farm. That's like twenty-five to thirty hectares. So it just depends. It all depends. And I couldn't say no to that. That valence. That was just. So it should be. So valence is an obscure corner of kind of the largest south of. The region we're dealing with. The lower historically is a region of smaller growers. And, you know, there's there's a little bit of everything there. You know, I think it's it's kind of cool for the sake of, you know, this project that is a larger grower.

But they're they're not in stasis. You know, they are evolving over time. And the style of wine they're making is changing. And you do have a younger generation that's pushing them more and kind of like a lower intervention kind of, you know, kind of methodology. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And it's, you know, just all it runs the gamut. But, yeah, this is my third most voluminous wine. It is. And I don't think that makes it bad. I think it just makes it available, you know, and affordable. So, yeah, there's that. I can't. I can't say that this is like you have to climb a mountain and ask the farmer at the end of the field where to find, you know, like there's. There's no Tibetan llama that you have to seek permission from to gain access.

Yeah, this is accessible and inclusive. Like, I feel like I feel like I mean, that is true across the wine pantheon. I think the nature of the llama is different, whether, you know, you are looking for, you know, like old school, you know, Burgundy or a new school called Cabernet or like hipster, you know, you know, natural juice. But there's always a llama, you know, there's always like a I am the one that has access to this. Right. And I feel like, you know, that's just kind of not what you're about. You want people to drink your wines. I do. And I want them to be honest and pure and affordable. That's all. And I don't know why in Paris you can have a glass of wine for four euros.

And in New York, it's like $16 minimum. That's gauche. Yeah, that's gauche. I'm so annoyed. Thompson, we got we got one more. Then I want to address Sauvignon quickly. Then we'll circle back around for more questions. So make it make it a good one. Oh, God. Okay. This is going to be a big one. Also fresh. But it's very relevant. Yeah. It's very relevant. It's topical. Okay. In that a lot of people were having trouble finding the wine, finding Chenin in particular from the Loire Valley, outside of the DC area. And somebody actually pointed out, based on some of the research that it was because of climate change. And I guess they're wondering whether Chenin is harder to source these days. And also how climate change in general has impacted your business as a whole, Mary.

Yeah. I mean, it has and it hasn't. I mean, it's we've had some really rough vintages. For example, in Saint-Pourcent where I do my rosé, it's my first 2019 to come. There was a heat wave and the yields are really low. So it does impact. That said, there's a lot of wine out there and wine that's waiting for me to find it, I think. But yeah, no, I mean, I'm saddened. I'm sad about climate change. I think that it's changing the nature of things like Burgundy, you know. But I think that for whatever reason, we're in kind of a warming cycle. And I think the wines of the Loire still are in ample supply. I've just I've never had a problem. I mean, I just ran out of my 2018 and now we're into 2019.

Like I'd say on the trade side, Thompson, I think that has more to do with fashion than anything else. I just I think Chenin is just hard to move, harder to move. Loire Valley Chenin is harder to move than it should be. Global warming is kind of a net. I don't want this come off the wrong way, but it's a net win for the Loire because historically it was at the northern extreme of, you know, the regions that could reliably ripen even in a grape like Chenin. And it has been the case since 1990 that they've had a string of vintages where everything ripens. And as historically in the Loire, the greatest wines were harvested late. They were sweeter wines.

And you know, to make those styles, they could only do it in maybe two years out of a decade when it was, you know, sufficiently warm across a vintage and then the conditions were appropriate at harvest. And it is the case now that they can make whatever one they want vintage to vintage because it's two to three degrees Celsius warmer there than it than it was historically. Um. So what happened though is people change what they're planning. So historically, there was more Chenin Blanc. And for whatever reason, people are ripping it out and planning more red varietals. So Cab Franc has become, you know, you know, much more predominant throughout the region than it was historically. So, I think, like in there's less Loire Chenin because of because of that.

Sorry, sweet wine is no longer fashionable. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not how we eat anymore, unfortunately. And I know you told me no more questions, but really, they just really want to watch the two of you taste the Anjou Blanc together and talk about it a little bit. Oh, cool. Do you have a bottle at the home studio, Mary? Oh, I've got one in the fridge. We knocked back one last night, so it's in your mind. Can I like sort of pretend I'm tasting it? So I will. I will. How about I will. I will taste and why don't you I will taste and act out and you can, you know, speak for me as I so we'll do like a bit of a pantomime thing as I as I swirl and taste.

OK, excellent. So you get this in the nose. It's I mean, for me, the greatest thing about elegant wines of Europe are the je ne sais quoi flavor. So I can't say like lemon lime or, you know, white flowers. I actually don't. Or like maybe you could say pear because Anjou is a varietal of pear as well. But, you know, like underripe, you know, apples or I mean, there's a million tasting notes. And all I what I like about wine is a certain je ne sais quoi. So I get minerality and this is just the nose. So I just I feel like there's a freshness and there's a there's a depth and there's certainly a flavor, but it's not the flavor of other primary flavors. It's its own thing.

And I like to say tertiary because like it can kind of remind you of like sometimes like the earth before a rainstorm or like there's just so there's a there's a great work. Petrichor is a great word for the smell of the earth after it rains, which is after it rains. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, blossoming like it smells like the spring. So tell me your notes. And it smells like two-fo. Yeah, I love I love the wet wool thing. That's something that I always get with Shannon. One of my it should be said one of my favorite expressions about describing wine is this Frank Zappa quote about music journalism. Zappa said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. 

Look, again, I'm a fan of his work. And I find that sometimes wine works the same way in the sense that, you know, wet wool pairs all the stuff we're throwing at it, you know, it may or may not bear any relationship to the chemical components that actually make wine taste and smell the way does, you know, their their analogies, you know, they are, you know, our best, you know, attempt to encapsulate, you know, the indescribable essence of what is is here, and I think part of the joy of tasting, you know, enough wine and developing a relationship with, you know, an indescribable individual region is coming back to something and having it feel familiar but not in a stayed or stale kind of way having it feel familiar in this like wonderful, you know, coming home kind of way and you know in terms of a sense of place that that is readily identifiable and I think that Andrew Blanc has that and I think, you know, it's one of the greatest, you know, compliments you can give a wine is that it has that what the French call 'tpct' it has that like, you know, imprint and the the white wool thing is there for me like the ripe pear thing I think is always there with Shannon. Shannon does a lot, though. Shannon can have this like acacia blossom; you have this honeyed quality, you know? It can give you like riper fruit in South Africa; it goes to this weird tropical place.

Shannon often gets like over cropped and over produced and then becomes like you know ubiquitous bulk wine in a way that doesn't have a varietal signature in the same way so you know Shannon does a lot of different things but you know this Anjou does a million different things too I mean you can taste 16 Anjou and sometimes they don't have a lot to do with each other yeah so and on the palate you might notice the residual sugar is under two grams per liter it's like 1.6 but some people think this wine is sweet which is really an interesting we have a very hard time with our sweet dry perception it's I don't call this wine sweet even though it has a wax weighty unctuousness to it do you feel that yeah I get the waxiness I get the weight of it does it go through mallow at all or do you even hit it mallow no mallow yeah so yeah so for those so malolactic fermentation is a conversion of malic acid which is the apple acid into lactic acid which is the yogurt acid and this has rep to it do you give it some time on the leaves just to kind of flesh out a bit or yeah a little bit I mean certainly a little bit and then a little bit of that's a nudge but we don't um we don't I don't like a lot Of that's a nudge because again, that shows a lot of the hand of the winemaker it fattens up the wine in a way that doesn't show me the terroir as much.

Leaves are leaves, can have to be done very delicately, um, but yeah it's something like six days on the uh on the leaves and then it gets racked, oh wow! And then of course there's no oak or anything, um, on it ever, yeah. And we don't use another thing I might point out is that white wines, they, that are any wine that uses aromatic yeast, um, as much as possible, I work with wines that only use indigenous yeast and they're not inoculated, but in some cases, and this wine has a little bit of organic natural. local yeast so it is inoculated and there's ways to inoculate that are not um obnoxious obnoxious inoculation um so with aromatic yeast you get the smell of like pineapple and banana and it makes you kind of it makes like a lay person's mouth water they're like oh fruit punch you know and that's what a lot of cheap like pinot grigio and unfortunately a lot of um wines that charge quite a bit of money for their wines and you once I smell aromatic yeast I get very like oh I think it's a really fake flavor so yeah we're getting we're getting a little nerdy for the for the sake of those of you playing along but you know the the debate Here's about you know whether the wine actually makes itself with, um, you know, a wild population of yeast that, um, are resident on the skins of grapes and in the winery to some extent or whether you as a winemaker are, um, adding an engineered strain of yeast and there are more or less benevolent ways to do that and fascinating enough I've tasted with and talked to a lot of winemakers who inoculate because they think that by inoculating they're actually, um, showing terroir more transparently, um, they feel like you know native yeast is a cellar imprint as opposed to a a true window into terroir so you know these are kind of fascinating. and fun debates to have without further ado Thompson we need to talk uh Sauvignier here because it's a really fun wine and I've all sorts of uh fabulous uh visuals for you all so first and foremost um I want to talk uh you know just cartoonishly beautiful uh French wine country so Chateau Epiret is a property that um dates back to the middle ages it's been in the same family the 17th century um the Chateau itself is modeled after uh the Petit Trianon which is on the grounds of Versailles I mean come on who wouldn't want to party there um I don't know if I'd want to live there it feels a little too haughty and kind of not cozy and potentially drafty but you know I want to go to an after party there I want to go to a white party there um and they make really awesome uh amazing uh wine and they are in uh Sauvignier um so Sauvignier um uh Mary referenced as this cerebral wine uh Sauvignier is one of my favorite wines in the world um it is kind of like a red wine drinkers white wine uh Sauvignier is close to Angers um Sauvignier is on the north bank of the Loire uh you're in an ocean of sweet wine here uh Sauvignier is historically famous but it historically is famous as a sweet wine uh the Sun King loved it as a sweet wine tried to visit

vineyards Coulee de Saron um got impeded uh by you know muddy roads um but its fame extends into the modern era but in a different form um Sauvignier is now a dry wine by law um it is the only corner of this sub-region of the Loire that is a dry wine by law um Chenin does a lot of different things and we kind of briefly alluded to that um but not really uh talked about it across the categories uh Chenin um you know in the case of Mary's wine it makes something that's you know you know bone dry um I'll be it perceptually a bit sweet at times you know depending on the taster uh but it can be honest to God sweet in the sake of a case of some you know bouvres or you know dessert wines it can be sparkling um unlike Riesling which is why Chenin actually is truly the most versatile grape in the world uh Chenin takes on oak really well uh that's not something that recently does readily uh but Chenin can um in the case of the Epirée takes on uh chestnut and and we'll delve into that in in just a second um but it is a bit of a chameleon and then on top of that it's a bit of a um problem child so uh Nicolas Jolie one of the most famous growers in the region says that Chenin is a problem child that becomes either and like children you know like problem children becomes either a genius or a terrorist I love That, uh, it ripens very unevenly.

I'm going to share a an image of Chenin on the vine, but um, you can see... This is a Chenin Blanc and um, this is Chenin um afflicted by noble rot, and then Chenin that's essentially under-ripe. So you can see the Chenin uh, that has that bright star those are under-ripe grapes. I'd be eating one of those middle clusters; it would be ragingly green apple... Uh, the clusters that look like dusty uh, mold are essentially molded but are highly edible and highly delicious and they would taste unctuous... So you know, even within the same bunch on the right here, you get a little bit of both, which is why classically um, in the Laura Valley, uh, the producers would do multiple passes through the vineyard so, uh, even in the case of a wine like Pascal's, you know, maybe they do two passes to pluck the ripest grapes, um, if they're going after really ripe grapes, in the case of a Sauvignon, um, they'll do you know three or four for the sweeter wines, they'll do upwards of 10. Um, so it can be a very labor-intensive uh wine that way. Sauvignon is different because of the terroir; it's dominated by schist, unlike um Boubrais which is dominated by more limestone soils and as such, a Boubrais is prettier; it's pure, it's a little more delicate. Sauvignon is pure schist and volcanic rock. Um, and uh, the folks at Chateau um to their credit have this amazing vineyard map that we're going to access here, uh, for those of you at home.

Um, and you can see um in the very vineyard that the wine you're drinking at home comes from. So, you see the Loire um, the river, um, and then you see Sauvignon on the north bank of the Loire, uh, it's on a slope. The French um, are obsessed with slopes for the sake of the best vineyards typically; the greatest vineyards occupy the saddle, the middle of the slope essentially. Um, this wine comes from Houbouille which is this vineyard right here, it is adjacent to La Coulee des Chérons, which is one of the most famous vineyards in France as a whole. It is a monopole, which is owned entirely by Nicolas Jolie, who I just quoted earlier.

It is adjacent to another vineyard called Rochamois, and those were both vineyards that were owned by the church until the French Revolution, and have been historically famous since the 12th century. Sauvignier, as such in its modern inclination, is a robust, full-bodied, honeyed kind of wine. What I love about this map is not only do you get a sense of, you know, geographically, where are these disparate plots owned by one Chateau Appiret, but you get a sense to what is the soil within each plot like. So this bit of red that you see in the Oubillot, which is unique even within Sauvignier, is rhyolite. Rhyolite is an extrusive igneous rock. I told you it was going to get nerdy, for the sake of the amateur geologist at home.

Extrusive refers to the fact that it's essentially lava flows that have come into contact with the air, and it's very heavy in silica. You know, what does that mean for the sake of its vineyards? You know, that's up to great debate, but tends to be less fertile, tends to be very well draining. So you get a decent amount of water stress for the sake of these vineyards. And, you know, very tiny berries, thicker skins, and more robust kinds of offerings for the sake of these wines. And then you have this, like, added layer of work in the cellar, which is fascinating for the sake of this wine, because I think the biggest difference on the nose is the level of oxidation for this wine.

So it's much more oxidized, much more sherry-like, much more saline, much less pure in terms of the quality of fruit, more, you know, more of a, you know, more of a, you know, more of a, you know, more of a, you know, more green apple, or sorry, more brown apple, rather, and in kind of bruised pear for the sake of this wine. And that's because this is a wine that spends six months in chestnut barrels. So people know oak, they love oak, but chestnut historically was also used. These are neutral barrels, so there's no definable new chestnut imprint. What is fascinating about chestnut is the pores are larger, so there's more oxygen access throughout the winemaking process, and that gives this, like, a brine-ier. You know, more oxidative tone.

And this is, furthermore, a single vineyard cuvée that is bottled, especially for Kermit Lynch, the famed American importer, and he insists on having it bottled unfined and unfiltered. He tastes the wine, essentially, directly out of cask, and says that, you know, this is the purest form of the wine, and I want to bring that to my consumers. And it's worth, celebrating as such, it's the kind of wine that can age for decades on end. And I think, you know, stylistically, for me, the really, you know, cool thing about this is, you know, it tastes utterly different. And, you know, almost like it's from a different grape than the wine we just tasted. And, you know, it's nonetheless, you know, kind of expressive of and, you know, indicative of Chenin as a grape.

But, you know, it shows the many different faces of Chenin in a really fun way. Have you had this wine before? Sorry, I was on mute. I haven't. I'm, I think my, I love the wines of Damien Leroux and Sauvignard. Do you know them? They, I don't think they have like hipster cred, but I think they're very terroir-driven. He has a few different cuvees. The last time I was at Coulee de Siron, it was pouring rain, and Nicolas Joly had to be called off for something, and I couldn't taste with him. So I missed that, but I did buy his book. But yeah, no, I haven't, I haven't had the Epirée with the chestnut barrel, that's for sure. And I'm kind of jealous. I'm sure it's incredible. So what's it like?

So when I taste this wine, I am, you know, mindful of the fact that it's made in a way that gives the wine access to oxygen during the winemaking process. So there's less, you know, a little less of that purity, a little less of that like high tone plurality. But there's something else. There's more of this like nutty, you know, sherry-like, you know, autolytic consciousness, which I think is equally fun. There's almost this like miso, you know, kind of acacia blossom, you know, like, like funk. So it's a gastronomic. And so what would you eat with that? Which is what I love about Sauvigny - it's sufficiently sturdy, and it goes with a variety of different things. Sauvigny, in my mind, is one of the great roast chicken wines in the world, which feels very classic.

And it's not, you know, like, you can't really be looking at it at all. French and very Loire Valley. I think it's also killer pork wine, you know, being the other white meat. But, you know, it's wonderfully multifaceted as well. You know, it has the substance to stand up to richer dishes, but it's got this racy acid truth. You know, you're never going to erase that from Shannon. It's always going to be acid driven. And, you know, that will carry the day with a variety of different like fresh vegetables and stuff like that. So I feel like it's one of those wines that functions as a bit of a skeleton key in terms of the kinds of things that you can throw at it.

And then it belies this notion that the most ageable wines in the world have to be red or have to be fiercely tannic, you know, because, you know, something like, you know, this particular offering, you know, can age endlessly. And Sauvignon is a wine in particular that can be kind of austere or harsh and severe at first and needs time to, you know, soften and unfold. And it's a delightfully fun progression to, you know, kind of follow. Well, that sounds so good. I'm very jealous. I should have gotten your packet. I feel bad you're not drinking. I know. I will drink. Don't worry. You know, it's between meals. So in France, you know, you drink at lunch and you drink at dinner, but you don't drink in between. It's an occupational hazard.

But just one comment. I really believe in blind tasting. It's really how I, you know, earned a lot of street cred, you know, just really try to, if you're having dinner with someone and you're opening the wine and they don't know what it is, pour the wine in the glass for your friend and have them try to identify it. I mean, I think that's one of the greatest ways to really build a real palate and a really deep understanding because it makes it really humbles the taster. I've seen some of the great wine critics out there, all men, by the way, it seems. But we need more women wine critics. But I've seen them humbled. You know, they thought it was Burgundy and it's a say, I swear that never happens to me.

It's the first time. I swear that never happens. Yeah. Exactly. It's a great thing to do. Yeah. So, Mary, just a couple final few questions for you. So you make wine, you know, in a variety of different parts of France and then the old world. What for you is particularly special about the Loire and what for you is particularly special about Shannon in the Loire? Yeah, it's just the two of them. It's all about that. It's the history. It's the history. It's the history. I mean, a great comment someone said, if you want to know what the soil is under the vines, just look at the houses. So in the Loire, you have these like regal limestone, chalky stone chateaux. And I feel like the just the history and the the absolute insistence, militant insistence on keeping their appellations pure.

So there's no like big rush. I mean, in the Turin, you can have Chardonnay and I'm kind of anti-varietal bottling. And so there they've religiously preserved their appellations. I mean, like seven years. I mean, it's not the easiest thing to sell in America, but it's not about the bottom line. It's about the tradition. I think Shannon and two others that are ancient is really important. And I think the gastronomy, I think maybe the best food, I've ever consumed, was from in restaurants and in people's homes in the Loire, I think it was, you know, just there's something about that Atlantic, the cool breezes, the river, I mean, just the that sort of riverbed soils, like, and then the troglodytes and the two foe, it all comes together for me.

And like, I'm a geek for history and culture. So there it is. So final question. Do you have hopes for this particular bottling? So, you know, you talked about the evolution of this winery. Do you have hopes for, you know, what this project will become for you? And then hopes for your portfolio more broadly, you talked about making wine in every corner of the old world. So, um, one of, so do I have hopes for that one? I think the wines are made beautifully. I think they'll just hopefully continue. I'm excited for an organic certification, although I don't want it to up the price. And I can debate organic with you all day long. Um, we'll get into that someday with the copper.

I don't believe in all the copper use in organic, but, um, but I'm, I'm, oh, my portfolio. So I'm actually, um, I have Cawar. I have a red from Sicily coming. I have a bunch of wines, but I have a second line, which is wines that are IGP. I started with a Cote de Gascon, um, and they're a bit less expensive. So I'm really trying to target people that have 10 to 12 bucks to spend on a bottling. So, um, I have a couple of wines that are bottle of wine. I think that's fair. There's good stuff out there, but you have to be really careful in sourcing. And then I just started a new company in Sweden with a friend of mine where we're going to distribute our wines in Sweden and Germany and Northern Europe mostly, but I'm doing a cider project and I'm exporting American ciders kind of in the same vein of what I do with the Appalachian system.

That just feels like an excuse to go to Sweden. Yeah, I just want to be like import and export. But I really want to promote like the best thing about France. It felt like you wanted to score points with your friends in Brooklyn and you're like, guys, I got the Swedish project lined up. It's going to be amazing. I know. No, Uber hipsters in Brooklyn. I'm not one of them though. I'm too neutral or whatever. But yeah, no, I think it's kind of fun to take the best of, like, I think goat cheese, where do you want to go? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I want your goat cheese from, I want it from the Loire Valley.

I think American ciders are really exciting and there's a lot of terroir there. So why not? You know? Yeah. So that's it. So thanks so much. You've been a really big support for me. So if you're willing to hang out, I imagine Sarah has all the questions from the commentary for you. I'm going to toast everyone who's on the chat if they have elsewhere to go. But thank you all so much for joining us. Again, I hope at the very least you become or wanted to become champions of the irascible grape that is Chenin Blanc, you know, versatile and vastly underappreciated. As it is, I hope you can, you know, drink more mindfully, whatever happens to be in your glass and you can continue to spread the love that you always spread in this form with us elsewhere in your, you know, working and personal life.

As always, thank you for joining us. We are alone together. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks, Bill. Awesome. All right, Sarah Thompson. Okay. Well, I'll start with some of the questions more about just Chenin as a varietal in the Loire Valley. Yeah. Other than Demi-Sec, like if it's labeled Demi-Sec, is there a way to tell the dryness of a wine before you purchase it? Other than alcohol content because obviously that may not necessarily be a tell, but some folks out there are wondering why? Why there's a broad range of residual sugar. Is that to me? I don't know, I don't know. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's some legal appellation. So if you know that if you're buying a Bonnezo, a Cote de Leon, an Aubence, or a Cordeuson, yeah, you're getting a sweet wine.

So if you know your appellations, which are sweet, Wine appellations you can't have residual sugar, that's um, you know that sweet. If you're buying an Anjou, they don't allow that. It has to be on you totally, as does Soaveur by law is a dry wine. You can make sweet wine in in souvenir now but uh, you have to label it as as such um, which I think helps the American consumer because I think we we want things to be very, you know, self-explanatory, you know, we don't want to have to know you know one appellation from another for the sake of decoding you know where our wine is going to land for the sake of sweetness.

So it's not a very satisfying uh answer uh and then you have you know an appellation like Boubras and Boubras is the the the French box of chocolates, you know, you never know what you're going to get in Boubras. I mean, you could get you could get anything, you know, you could get something that's sweet, you could get you know something that's Tondrasek which is you know uh the equivalent of the like German fine herb or uh, you could get something that's like Demisek which is sweeter still, you could get Milou which is you know spade lacerosa level sweetness and you could get you know dessert wine um, so um I think you know part of taking on Laura Valley Shannon is uh, you know, living in that.

Mystery, you know, part of it is, you know, part of it is, you know. You know, you know this chocolate might be caramel, this this one might be some you know kind of crazy like a nougat that you know I'm not into but you know I'm gonna drink a bottle, you know, um. So there's never I think as you're learning, you just have to forgive yourself those missteps and then the other thing too is that, like, you know, the sweetness on wines gets such a bad rap, but um, you know, in the right context it is like so lovely, um, you know. Those demiseks in particular from Boubrais, like, you know, fire up the barbecue, you know, hit me with some you know, um, spicy, you know, southeast Asian cuisine, you know.

Those are stunning, uh, you know pairings and you know they are stunning because of not in spite of the sweetness of those wines. Um, one of our wine friends was asking too about um, the oxidative style that's kind of become more prominent in Sauvignon and if that's now a thing of Sauvignon has that become a well, you have a lot of so what's fascinating to me about the law and American speaker that says someone on the ground is that you have all these um forces uh in the mix so you know you have an anti-sulfite imagination going back to the ancient world I mean music is kind of an instance this was repeated for thousands of times. In a joint conversation, but um, after World War II, the lower valley was really dominated by this movement toward more industrial agriculture.

And it's only within the last you know generation or so that people are pulling that back. And you have people like Nicolas Joli who advocating for biodynamics, um, and you know a lot of other growers, um, who followed him. And a lot of other people independently, you know, working toward our organic viticulture. And then you have this added layer of the uh, and I saw fight movement, um, so uh, the anti-sulfite movement, um, so you know there's just these all the roster now would be colorisc верх. So early in the war, the black barrel of the teary wren; these forces that have been really significant in shaping French wine in the latest generation, that have been really, you know, active and alive in the Loire.

And part of that is because in the Loire, you know, with the exception of Sauvignier - it's a little different because it's historical and historically it's small. Historically, there are only like 10 to 12 estates. Now there are about three dozen and land is pretty expensive there. But throughout the Loire, you know, you could buy land, you know, you could have a winery there, whereas in Burgundy and Bordeaux, that's a lot harder. So, you know, there is a spirit of invention from younger winemakers and a spirit of innovation, like innovation. But the oxidative piece, you know, I think part of that is people just finding new ways to work. Chenin is a grape that, you know, historically could be harshly acidic in the worst possible way.

And like the historic style, the kind of like bulk wine was harvested early. It was like a supermarket kind of drink. It wasn't really wine. It was just kind of like this French, you know, alcoholic thing. People are working against that now. Part of the way they're doing that to soften Chenin is to work in oak. And that gives you more oxidation. And then on the natural wine side, people are working without sulfur, which inherently will give you oxidation. You know, so, you know, there are these stylistic choices that people are making that create a more oxidative wine. I think, you know, the wine that you have, you know, married for the sake of Anjou Blanc is kind of the antithesis of that style.

Yeah, actually, one of the big forces in the Loire is the rejection of the appellation system now. So you have a lot of wines that might be farmed or grown in Anjou that are called Vin de France because they don't believe in the rules. And that's okay. And I actually, I commend them for doing what they believe in. I also, though, think to reject the Appalachian system is cool, but most people don't understand the Appalachian system. So I just wanted to back people up and, like, do 101. So I'm not against, like, the hipsters or the people that reject it. I just think that once you understand Anjou, then you can reject it. It's like Basquiat, you know, like, learn to paint and then, like, break it. Go disco.

Color inside the lines, then you can color outside. Exactly. For the sake, so Mary, speak to the winemaking on your Anjou Blanc. So you spoke to, you know, inoculated yeast there. Is this a wine that is fine and filtered? Yeah, there's a light filtration. We use those big ones that are used, like, by Rousseau and Burgundy. So really high-quality filtration, but very light. Is it a plate or? It's the plates, yeah. But it's not, like, they're, and I, by the way, I always, I'm really interested in, really, the viticulture side of wine. I like to add more, but then when you get really, really technical, I'm like, I can tell you the alcohol, the RS, the filtration, but I really like when the winemaker explains the whole thing.

But we, one of the most important things, I think, is the yields are pretty low. So we like to be under 50 hectoliter per hectare on the yields. We do green harvest to put more energy into the remaining fruit on the vineyards. Vines. There's all kinds of; all of the vineyard is the double guyot, and it's very, they work so hard in the vineyard, so that the fruit is really interesting and complex, and then it comes into the winery. It macerates for a little bit, like I think, what would I say, like 48 to 72 hours? I'm not even quite sure. You give it a gentle contact. Well, just a little, not like a week, you know. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And you do that, you do that to dampen acid and give it a little more breadth.

Yeah, exactly, and I did that, you know, I, I did harvest with Yves Cuiro in the Côte Rôtie and Condrieu, and I made some wines. Yeah, and I made Condrieu, and that was like my, my thing, so I, yeah. Yves is such an aromatic grape that, like, you know, to not give it contact on the skins doesn't make any sense. Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, we have a little bit, but then it's pressed, and then it, so then the yeast is added, and they try to, I mean, they, they aspire to doing no inoculation, you know, I mean, like, we, it's just hard to get that quality and volume without it at the moment, but maybe we can figure out a way to, and so that would be a goal for the wine in the future.

Yeah,  I am good friends with some guys in the Finger Lakes, and they, they make wine not at that scale. I mean, they're in the more, you know, kind of medium, you know, size, you know, 30 plus hectare kind of program than 100 plus, but, you know, they've spoken to just, you know, the quality of the fruit being the driver, so the cleaner your fruit coming in, the easier it is to work with native yeast populations, whereas, you know, if you're, you know, harvesting mechanically or, or, you know, anything you have to do to, you know, manage things on a larger scale makes it a little harder, like that much harder to trust your, you know, native population in the, in the cellar.

Exactly, and then when you get really industrial, everything's mechanic, mechanical, and they, like, squeeze not only grapes, but, like, rodents, and all the stuff that they just, they don't know what they're pressing, so, sort of, yeah, we don't like that. Well, filter for it anyway, so who cares? Exactly, and then the wine goes into tank once it's fermented. It leaves the fermentation vessel, and it goes into a tank, and it settles, and it's bottled pretty. I mean, I'm getting my 2019, so it's not, like, a year in tank, like, it's bottled when it needs to be, which is, you know, four or five months after the harvest, max. So it's a fresh one, you know. It's meant to be drunk, and I have, like, older bottles that are beautiful, but this is the kind of wine that you drink, you know.

So he makes wine under his own label as well, Mary, which is the Chateau Abriley, right? Yep, yep, all of my wineries otherwise commercialize their wine. What are, what are his other wines like? Well, they're similar, I mean, basically it's all coming from the same family and the same production. I might, I might work with his Gros L'eau, he makes a lot of Gros L'eau, and we do this really beautiful dry Gros L'eau Rosé sparkling, and then we, I actually just started working with Anjou Rouge, which is Cabernet Franc, and I did the Cuvée with a little Cabernet Sauvignon, so mostly Cabernet Franc, and it's really, really classic. It's got the, you know, the Terroir, that smell, that chalk smell in the, in the Cab Franc, in the Terroir that you don't get anywhere else.

So yeah, I mean, and, and you can buy essentially the same, not the same blend, because I do the blending for my wine, but you know, the grapes that come from the same area in their bottle. So I mean, there's, they, they make great wines in their own packaging and sell them in France and Germany and beyond. I just didn't like the packaging that much. I'm kind of a snob about packaging. And I just felt like I could do a cuvee with Mary Taylor. And this one is specifically a blend of the, the Schist and the limestone. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's, what I'm doing is commercial. It is like, it's, it's a business model. And that makes some wine people think it's cheesy, but I'm like, I want to open up the Appalachian system to the everyday drinker and make it accessible.

So call it cheesy, but I think I'm doing, I'm the more I succeed, the more you succeed as like a geeky wine person. And I think, I think also too, the at the end of the day the question is, you know, are you compromising the things that you're claiming to represent? And, you know, I I just try to, you know, trust my, you know, the strength of my own convictions in terms, of drinking things and, you know, having had enough Shannon to, you know, inexpertly say this tastes like Shannon to me. And, and I feel like all of your wines speak to a place, you know, and, you know, I trust the person that is, you know, kind of putting her stamp on it for the sake of; this tastes like the Duero, this tastes like Valençay, this tastes like Bordeaux to me.

And, you know, I, I, I recognize that sensibility and it's a sensibility that I, you know, gravitate toward it. And then that, you know, kind of speaks, speaks to me; and, you know, for the sake of the Shannon, you know, sure, you know, I pay under $10 a bottle for this, you know, wholesale, you know, but it tastes like Shannon should taste from the war. And, you know, but beyond that, you know, I love, you know, the combination of parts. So, you know, it, it, it sings, you know, it has on one level that kind of crisp, clean acid driven imprint, and then something a little broader and, you know, at the price point, you can't, you can't beat that. Yeah. You, you can't like call me a commercial industrial, like evil titan of industry or something.

Like when I'm working with like Valençay, I'm not a knock, like, yeah. But yeah, I think that there's, there's a lot of authenticity there, but I'm not trying to say that this is like the best thing. Like there's a lot of out there that's really cool and really, really expensive as well. And, and I think what's happening in natural wine world is it can be a little bit, a little bit douchey, honestly, like it's a little bit like if the wine has flaws and is cloudy and unfiltered, it's considered good. And I'm like, well, hold on, let's back it up and see, is there terroir? What's the yield? I mean, is there minerality? Is there a complexity? You know, if it's just nail polish remover, I don't, you know, like it either.

Yeah. It becomes a bit of a Tibetan llama, velvet rope situation where it's about, it's more about exclusivity than it is about, you know, the wine. Yeah. Well, that's why I always use the word inclusive because I'm anti-exclusive. I want to be invited to, you know. Yeah. So that's, that's that. By the way, I have a lot of, somebody wrote Mary Taylor 2024. And I'm super politically active, like with the wine tariffs. So if you want to go on my website and check out some of the articles, like New York Times and stuff, I, I went and spoke in front of the, the trade rep in the, in DC. And then I think I saw you that, that time. So yeah. Yeah. I'll keep being very political.

My, my export import is part of that whole, that whole thing. What else you got, Thompson? Mary, I think people just really want you on the ballot for 2024. This is like, it's been on the chats the entire time. Oh, I might. I will see. Want to know like where they, where they can source your wines from all over and also how to follow you and like what the best ways are to support you, so as we go. Awesome. I'm in, I'm not in Virginia yet, but we're working on that. But I'm in like 18 states. You can go on my website. It's Mary Taylor. Oh, sorry, MT.wine is my website. I have a .wine, by the way. It confounds everybody. If you ever have a question, I'm Mary@MT.wine.

And then my Instagram, I actually work pretty hard at keeping, you know, posting every day is at Mary Taylor Wine. And I'm openly political and I'm very much into my subject. And I'm also, you know, really interested in the business of wine too. And you know, that like, I love the idea of sustainability in shipping. I know like Marisk is doing a, is trying to do a zero carbon footprint ocean freight. And I'm so interested in that. Are you playing around with bag in a box at all? Yeah, I definitely want to do that. I love bag in the box. I was once at Jean-Claude Ramonet's house, you know, like the great Pouligny Montrachet. And he had a bag in box in the fridge of Rosé. I love bag in box.

I like, I like sustainable vessels. I just, you know, I love bag in box. I just, part of what I was doing is like that really historical and traditional project. So it all had to be cork, glass bottle, but. Oh, it's hard. I think it's one of those things too. It's like, I think establishing your name, it would hard to be, it's hard to introduce yourself to the market as Mary Taylor bag in box. People would have liked certain, you know, like connotations, you know, attached to the brand as such. But, you know, if you make your name, you know, with proper, you know, beautifully designed 50 glass bottles and people, you know, resonate with your offerings as classic old world wines, then you can pivot to, you know. Yeah.

And I've done it. Like, I don't know if you've seen Pascal Lombert's Chinon box. I designed that. I've done a few packages in the industry. It's beautiful, but it's like $45 and people who want a bag in box don't want to spend $45. But another package I actually wanted to do was 500 milliliter. Because as a single person, when I crack a bottle of wine alone at night, I tend to finish it. You know? I mean, I just like, it's so delicious. It keeps sipping and it's gone. And then I have a little headache in the morning and I thought half bottle is not enough. Like you always want that third glass, but you don't want the fourth glass or like the end of the bottle, but you have it anyway, because the darn thing is open.

So I thought, why don't we make like a single bottle of wine? And I thought, well, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know there ain't before a dream. You just never thought about money. Thank you very much. This is so powerful. You know, I lose one of the things that I noticed about you every time, like I look at it just, you know, every time I see a cotton object bag and I see everything kind of rushes for its reason, but it's good spin. And it wins me. I mean, no, I've been thinking about this for a long time and it's in after a year. It does really well. It's what gets me excited though.

About, like, the uh, like the soup in a loaf of bread, is that a yeah, yeah, um cool? What else all about the honesty though? I see that that's cool. Any other question for me, I think that's it. I mean, this was really awesome and I think people just really want to... I think you'll be getting a lot of wine purchases. I want to hang with you know. All about inclusivity, I can't wait to like have a dance party in the middle of every street in every city, you know. I miss everyone. Um, well, brilliant! Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to everyone uh, participating uh, at home. You rock, Mary. Cheers, guys! Restaurants all right, take care.